“But how? Why would she do that?”
“It was easy enough,” he said with a shrug. “After the two days I spent helping with those damned bees of hers, she owed me. And, with no more than the promise of another day’s labor, she agreed to help. She’s quite the baker, actually. And quite the shrewd negotiator, too.”
Manual labor? He’d basically hired out his services for nothing more than a cake. A cake that benefited Syrie, not him.
“Why would you do something like that for me?”
He chuckled, a deep, soothing sound that rumbled up from his chest. “You have yer answer right there. Because it was for you. To make you happy. Do you no’ ken by now, mo siobhrag, I’d do anything for you.” Reaching out, he placed his knuckles against her cheek, his thumb strumming against her temple.
A simple contact, nothing more than his hand lightly stroking the side of her face. And yet it felt as if he held her fast, shackled to him by rope and wire.
Or maybe she only wanted to be shackled to him.
“It would be so easy to believe your words,” she said, her eyes captured by his as surely as his touch held her body captive.
“I speak only the truth to you,” he said, his eyes darkening as he spoke. “I could do nothing else. You may believe me.”
Believe him she did. With nothing more than his words for proof, she found herself falling into a deep chasm where nothing existed except her, him and the reassuring sound of his voice.
The same voice that whispered a string of nonsense words into her ear, soft and low, once she found herself in his arms. And then, somehow, his lips covered hers. A moment later, her hands roamed freely over the chest she’d imagined caressing since the first moment she’d seen him.
If she were ever to find herself in heaven, surely it would be exactly like this.
His hands slid down her shoulders, taking the straps of her nightgown with them. His mouth was on her neck by the time she felt the silky scrap of material pool on the floor at her feet.
“By Freya,” he moaned, his forehead against hers. “Yer the most beautiful thing that’s ever graced my life.”
She would thank him, if she could. Thank him and tell him how beautiful he was, too. If only she could manage to form the words.
But somehow all she could think of was getting his mouth back down to hers. Feeling his tongue as it traced a path over the outline of her lips.
His arm slid down her back, down, to rest behind her legs, enabling him to scoop her off her feet. Talented man that he was, he did it all without breaking the kiss she currently enjoyed.
“Yer room or mine?” he asked, his voice husky, breathless.
“We can’t,” she said. “If anyone were to come up and find either of us not in our room, it would look…”
She left it hanging, more annoyed with herself than anything else. Why did she care what anyone thought about what she did? Why couldn’t she just this once do whatever she wanted?
“No’ if they hear the water.” He stepped into the tub and, without shifting his hold on her, turned the water on. “Whichever room they come to, they’ll think we’re in the shower, aye?”
“And we are,” she murmured as he slowly lowered her to her feet.
The water, warm and comforting, poured down on their heads, running in happy little torrents down Patrick’s chest. Happy little inviting torrents.
She leaned into him, slowly lowering herself as she traced her tongue along one of those torrents. At his waistband, she stopped, her fingers fumbling with the button that blocked her path. His hands fastened around her upper arms, pulling her back up to stand, just before he returned the favor of torrent-tracing.
The pleasure of it all was surely going to drive her completely insane. When she thought she could stand no more, he rose to tower over her, smoothing her wet hair from her face as he pressed his now naked body against hers, her back easing up against the wet tile of the shower wall.
“I’ve waited for you my whole life,” he murmured as he entered her. “I’ve waited for this.”
Their gasps were identical echoes of one another. A moment to regain themselves and he lifted her legs to clasp around his back. She gave herself over to the sheer intensity of feeling as he withdrew and entered her again, repeatedly, going deeper with each thrust.
She missed the beginning of his release, already lost in the throes of her own. It was like standing on a precipice, peering out into the most beautiful valley she’d ever seen. And when she tipped over the edge, she was flying, destined for a perfect landing.
Patrick had said he was searching for his future, his destiny. In this moment, their bodies locked together, she knew she’d found her own.
In that moment of realization, her mind exploded into a miasma of colors and shapes, pulsing around her, demanding her attention. Sounds, feelings, vague but insistent, they pummeled against the inside of her head as if in a mass hysteria of exodus. Colors, shapes, sounds and feelings, building in intensity. Colors, shapes, sounds, feelings and, all at once, memories, tumbling over one another in their haste to return to the place they belonged.
Memories of everything. Who she was, how she’d gotten here, all of it. She could clearly see her life before she’d come to this place. Wyddecol and the Temple of Danu, Castle MacGahan and all the people she’d left behind. All the people she cared for. And towering over it all, with eyes of piercing blue, stood Patrick.
She looked up into the concerned eyes of the man who held her in his arms.
She remembered everything.
She remembered Patrick.
* * *
“I know you,” Syrie murmured, tears pooling in her eyes to mix with the spray of the shower running down her beautiful body.
Patrick thought his heart might well burst from the love he felt.
“I should hope you know me,” he said, forcing a grin to break the tension of the moment. “After what we just did, I’d no’ like you to think of me as a stranger.”
“No,” she said as she shook her head and brought her hands to rest on either side of his face. “I know you. I remember you. I remember me. I remember everything.”
His vision misted over as he realized what she was telling him, and he drew her close, crushing her to his chest.
His Syrie was returned to him.
He held her until the temperature of the water changed so that it was as if they stood in a mountain stream rather than a hot spring, and Syrie began to shiver in his arms.
Reluctant to let her go, Patrick reached down and turned off the water. With one hand still clutching her arm, he pulled one of the big towels from its rack to wrap around her before lifting her out of the tub and carrying her to his room. He left her sitting on the stool in front of the big mirrored dresser to go back for her robe. When he returned, he found her using the towel in an attempt to dry her hair. He held the robe for her to slip her arms into and then wrapped his plaid around his own waist before he reached into the top drawer to pull out the comb he’d carried with him to this time. Syrie’s comb.
“Where did you get that?” she asked, her eyes meeting his in the reflection of the mirror.
“Yer room at Castle MacGahan.”
He didn’t add that he’d been wild with grief and fear, searching desperately for any clue as to where she’d gone.
“How did you find me?”
“Orabilis.” That name should explain well enough, though perhaps he wasn’t giving all the credit due. “And Editha Faas.”
Syrie nodded thoughtfully, her eyes once again capturing his in the mirror. “You were aware of where you would have to come to find me? When you would have to follow to?”
It was his turn to nod. “I was.”
“And you followed me anyway.”
It wasn’t a question any more than he had questioned whether or not to come after her.
“I would follow you anywhere, mo siobhrag. Anywhere in the world. Anywhere in time.”
“Y
ou’d do all that,” she said with a smile lighting her eyes. “But you won’t cease from calling me an Elf.”
Apparently her memories of the old language had returned with all the others. Interesting she didn’t comment on his having referred to her as my Elf. He should pursue that. Should question her.
If he didn’t fear her answer.
But he had no reason to fear, did he? Hadn’t Orabilis told him she would regain her memories only when she fell in love with him again? Her memories had returned, so it stood to reason…
Still, he doubted. Doubted that he, the unworthy third son, should find the good fortune to have a woman such as Syrie return his love.
“Are you ready to return home with me?” he asked, hesitant to face his real question.
Syrie reached up to place a hand over his, stopping him as he drew the comb through her hair. “I’m not sure I want to go back, Patrick. I have a place here. Friends. A new family. A home where I’m wanted.”
“Yer wanted in yer own time, as well,” Patrick said quietly, the fear growing in his heart.
“Where would that be that you think I’m wanted? I’m but another mouth for your brother to worry over feeding at Castle MacGahan. Certainly not even you could think that I’m wanted in Wyddecol. My people have made it abundantly clear they don’t want me there.” Syrie shook her head as if to deny any protest he might make and slipped the comb from his fingers to run it through her hair. “No. I think maybe it’s best if I go on being Syrie Alburn, the girl with no memory.”
“You’ll no’ be safe here, Syrie. The Fae willna leave you in peace. No’ with yer memory returned. Yer too great a danger to them, no matter what time yer in.”
“Ridiculous,” she huffed. “They threw me away. They wouldn’t have done that if they considered me a threat. They could not care less about me. And I’m not needed at Castle MacGahan any longer, so I’ll stay here where there are people who care about me. People I might be able to help in some way.”
“You were no’ a threat without your memory. No’ a threat before I came after you. But you remember now. Now you are a threat to them.”
His explanation wasn’t at all what he wanted to say. What about me? he wanted to ask. What about us?
Asking those questions would mean giving up any pretense of pride. Asking would mean opening himself up to the possibility of the greatest rejection, the greatest pain he’d ever encountered. And yet asking was the only way he would know for sure.
“Syrie,” he began, getting no further, thanks to a bloodcurdling scream from downstairs.
“Ellen,” Syrie breathed, her eyes wide with fear as she surged to her feet.
He was already headed out the door and down the stairs with Syrie following closely on his heels.
It took only a second to absorb the meaning of the scene awaiting them in the living room. Ellen held a lamp in front of her, brandishing it like a weapon to keep the stranger with a long knife at bay. Blood dripped from her arm but she seemed unaware of the wound, her eyes flashing with each swing she took at the wild-eyed man.
“Call Danny,” she yelled, not taking her eyes off the man. “Come into my home, will you? Threaten my friends? I don’t think so.”
As if Patrick had any intention of waiting for Ellen’s brother in a situation like this! He was vaguely aware of Syrie grabbing the telephone as the bright haze of battle settled around him and he charged the intruder. His body hit the man like a battering ram as he grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the knife. The two of them crashed against the wall and slid to the floor, Patrick on top of the smaller man. Patrick forced the hand holding the knife into the air and then slammed it to the floor, sending the knife skittering across the wood as the attacker’s fingers splayed wide.
Beneath him, the intruder kept up a litany of words, repeating them over and over, as if he were unaware that whatever he’d planned to do, it certainly wasn’t going to happen now.
“Find Elesyria. Destroy. Find Elesyria. Destroy.”
Patrick lifted himself off the man’s body long enough to flip him over onto his stomach and pull his arms up behind him. There, he waited, his knee in the man’s back to make sure the bastard didn’t try to follow through on the threat he continued to repeat.
“Danny’s on his way,” Syrie said, hurrying to Ellen’s side. “It’s all going to be okay now. Let me have a look at that arm.”
“Sonofabitch,” Ellen spat out, her breath coming in great heaves. “Thought you could come in here and attack my family, did you? Not in this lifetime, fella.”
As if the statement took the last of her strength, Ellen let the heavy lamp drop, shattering at her feet, before Syrie led her over to sit on the sofa.
With the man still squirming under his hold, Patrick looked toward Syrie, catching her frightened gaze.
“Everything is going to be okay now,” she said again, as if to force the statement to be truth.
“You ken as well as I do, yer wrong on that count,” he said. “He’s no’ the first and he willna be the last. They’ll continue to come. There will be even more of them now that you remember.”
Syrie’s expression blanked as she nodded her acknowledgment of his words. Her hands busily worked at wrapping a towel around the wound on Ellen’s arm. When she’d done all that she could, she rose to her feet and disappeared upstairs.
Outside, the whine of a police siren shattered the quiet night, while red and blue lights flashed through the window, creating a colorful show on the walls.
Danny had arrived with reinforcements. They swarmed into the small room, relieving Patrick of his perch, freeing him to go after Syrie.
He found her in her room, dressed in a gown he remembered all too well from the few times he’d seen her wear it. A gown of green flowing material he had not one single doubt had its origins in Wyddecol.
“What are you doing?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“You were right,” she said, tears glazing her eyes. “I can’t stay here. Not now. Not if it means putting my family here in danger.”
“What do you want to do?” he asked. “It’s yer call. You’ve only to tell me your wish.”
“I want to go after them,” she said, her chin lifted. “I want to make them pay for what they did to Ellen. Make them pay for what they did to the Goddess. Make them pay for what they did to me. But how can I? I’m only one woman.”
This was not the Syrie he knew. Not this broken, unsure woman. His Syrie would never admit defeat. Never allow anyone to shake her confidence in herself. She was still in there. He knew she had to be. He had but to drag her out and expose her to the light of day.
“One woman.” Patrick snorted, pleased to see surprise replace the defeat in her expression. “You ken as well as I do, yer so much more than that. Yer a powerful Fae who takes a backseat to none. That’s why they’ve come after you. It’s the power you wield they fear.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, sounding for all the world like a lost child.
“You do know. And as to being alone, yer no’ that.” He crossed the room to fold her in his embrace. “You’ll never be that. No’ for as long as I draw breath.”
“Oh, Patrick,” she said, searching his eyes as if she thought to find herself in there. “I think you just might be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
That was only fair. Because Syrie was definitely the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Chapter 21
“I still don’t understand why you think you have to leave.” Ellen held on to Syrie’s hand, her eyes pleading as much as her words ever had. “They’ve taken that lunatic into custody so you won’t have to worry about him coming back. Danny assured me of that.”
“I have to go because, if I stay, he won’t be the last.” Syrie hugged her friend before stepping away from her. “I have things I need to take care of. And once I do, I’ll be back for a visit. I promise.”
“You promise,” Ellen repeated, almost a
s if she doubted Syrie’s words.
“I promise,” Syrie confirmed, hugging Ellen once more. “I owe you a debt, my friend. Maybe one too large to ever repay, but I will be back to give it a try.”
“Pfft,” Ellen said. “You owe me nothing. You were meant to be here. Meant to become my heart-sister, every bit as much as Rosella.”
Syrie smiled, her heart heavy that she’d miss saying goodbye to her other friend. “You’ll give my love to Rosie, right? Tell her I’ll see her again, too.”
Ellen nodded her agreement as Syrie turned away.
Enough of this emotional farewell. She had business that needed attending to. Fae who needed attending to.
She passed through the kitchen and let herself out the back door, where she found Patrick waiting, just as he’d promised. He had also changed back into his own clothing, for the most part. He still wore the high-top sneakers Clint had bought for him the week before.
Syrie cast a quizzical glance at the shoes and then up to him. “Do you think that’s a wise idea? Taking something like that back with you?”
He shrugged, his face breaking into one of those lovely smiles that stole her heart. “It’s no’ as if I plan to give them to anyone. And should I die, you’ll make sure to burn them for me, aye?”
Of course he was teasing. At least, she hoped he was teasing.
“The shoes and you in them, if you allow yourself to be killed. So, best you remember that and stay on your guard.”
And whoever dared to try to kill Patrick would burn, too. The difference was, she just might not take the time to kill them first.
“I will keep that in mind, Elf.”
His grin kept her from correcting him again. Seriously, she was obviously wasting her time with the corrections anyway.
“What do we do now?” he asked, reaching out to take her hand. “Must we go somewhere special? Orabilis sent me from some glen she said contained special powers, and I know that she awaits our return there.”
Anywhere in Time (Magic of Time Book 2) Page 15